I’ve been asked to create a Keyman IPA keyboard for mobile devices. I’ve created a first draft of the layout, but would appreciate some assistance in improving it’s usability.
In order to test the layout, you’ll need to have the Keyman app installed on your mobile device. The Keyman app is in both the Google Play Store as well as the Apple App Store
This keyboard is supposed to be cross-platform, but I lack the ability to test it on iOS devices.
Once you have the Keyman app, you can go here to get the keyboard
On that page, you can click on the blue icon on the bottom to get the keyboard.
This Google Doc page will provide you with basic documentation as to the mobile layout
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K5Fz-PztdrxakvVQkC9hoWuaZZ_77lJUql-V2eKjBFw/edit?usp=sharing
Once you’ve tested the keyboard, I would appreciate your using this google form to make suggestions and provide insights on how to improve the layout.
https://goo.gl/forms/fNnrPxqhVtgsLZPq2
Some of the things I’m looking for help with
How to best organize the diacritic layer to make it easier to find the diacritic you are after?
What’s the easiest way to access the diacritic and tone layers? In this version of the keyboard, I’m presenting two options. The Diacritic Layer and Tone layer both have their own button and are accessible by long pressing the 123 button.
Are there base character + diacritic combinations that are used frequently enough to warrant that combinations being available via long pressing the base character?
Also, this keyboard is supposed to present the user with the SIL IPA Keyman Keyboard if the user is using an external keyboard on their mobile device. I lack the ability to test to see if that’s working properly.
The mobile layout is designed so that any of the characters that you would have accessed using the Shift, >,<, or = key and the base character are available by long pressing the base character in the default (or lower case) layer.
For reference, the SIL IPA keyboard for Keyman Desktop can be found here
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=uniipakeyboard
The pdf documentation fot the SIL IPA keyboard for Keyman can be downloaded from here directly
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/render_download.php?format=file&media_id=IPAUni_14.pdf&filename=IPAUni_14.pdf
(also posted in the LingTransoft Google Group)